West Virginia Did Not Comply With Intake, Screening, Assessment, and Investigation Requirements for Responding to Reports of Child Abuse and Neglect
Why OIG Did This Audit?
- Abuse and neglect against a child by a parent, caregiver, or another person can have a long-term impact on the child’s health, opportunity, and well-being. Abuse can be physical, sexual, or emotional in nature. Neglect is a failure to meet the child’s basic needs, such as housing, food, clothing, education, and access to medical care.
- This audit is part of a series that examines States’ compliance with the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act’s requirements for the intake, screening, assessment, and investigation of reports of child abuse and neglect. Based on our risk assessment and West Virginia news outlets that reported the high-profile death related to child neglect of a teenager, we selected West Virginia for audit.
What OIG Found
On the basis of our sample results, we estimated that 91 percent of the 100 screened-in family reports for our audit period were not in compliance with 1 or more requirements related to the intake, screening, assessment, and investigation of child abuse and neglect.
What OIG Recommends
We made four recommendations, including that West Virginia take the appropriate steps to ensure that child welfare workers perform all required procedures, provide training, develop a system edit, and develop written policies and procedures. The full recommendations are in the report. West Virginia concurred with all four recommendations, and outlined actions that it has taken and plans to take to address our recommendations.
Recommendation Details (4)
25-A-01-124.01 to ACF – Open Unimplemented
Update expected on 03/25/2026
We recommend that the West Virginia Department of Human Services, Bureau for Social Services take appropriate steps to ensure child welfare workers perform all required procedures within the intake assessment and the initial assessment processes as required.
25-A-01-124.02 to ACF – Open Unimplemented
Update expected on 03/25/2026
We recommend that the West Virginia Department of Human Services, Bureau for Social Services provide training to supervisors on the requirement to notify mandated reporters of whether the referral was accepted for assessment or screened out.
25-A-01-124.03 to ACF – Open Unimplemented
Update expected on 03/25/2026
We recommend that the West Virginia Department of Human Services, Bureau for Social Services develop a new system edit to prevent an incorrect safety assessment decision based on the impending safety threats selected.
25-A-01-124.04 to ACF – Open Unimplemented
Update expected on 03/25/2026
We recommend that the West Virginia Department of Human Services, Bureau for Social Services develop written policies and procedures that include a requirement for supervisors to monitor child welfare worker progress to ensure interviews with children and adults are conducted as required; and aging reports on a weekly basis to promptly identify delays in closing out the initial assessment within 30 days as required.
